


right here, right now

by finelineholland



Series: rina week 2020! [1]
Category: High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Homecoming, Rina Week 2020 (HSM: The Series), childhood friends to lover, rinaweek2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:42:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24139813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finelineholland/pseuds/finelineholland
Summary: "A snap. And a thud. And whatever other sounds a rope ladder makes when it disconnects from House Porwen and hits the ground, taking Ricky with it."
Relationships: Ricky Bowen & Gina Porter, Ricky Bowen/Gina Porter
Series: rina week 2020! [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1742014
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32





	right here, right now

**Author's Note:**

> it's rina week! i'm so so excited to share all of these works this week, it means the world that so many people are participating! this one is for you, rina nation! 
> 
> if you want to participate in rina week, the prompts are posted on my twitter, @finelinehoiiand!
> 
> hope you enjoy!
> 
> tw// slight mention of death

Deja Vu. An expression derived from the French, directly translating to “already seen”. A feeling of having already experienced the present situation. Tedious familiarity. 

It’s the only expression that came to mind as Gina sat in the small treehouse, breathing in the comforting scent of pine and childhood memories. 

Well, the only expression that she wasn’t too embarrassed to allow to linger in the forefront of her mind. Because all of the other expressions that she was trying (and failing) to push away were about _him._

The way his cheeks flushed red when he suggested that they color coordinate and go to their last homecoming together because neither of them had dates and _that’s what best friends do._

The way he flashed that sickeningly charming smile when he picked her up from her house earlier that evening and told her that she looked _“wow”_ as she approached him to straighten the knot in his burgundy tie. 

The way his hand rested on her waist as they took pictures in the school auditorium, causing the skin underneath to feel like it was on _fire_ , even after he’d removed it. 

The way she was sure he’d stolen every star in the night sky because of how his eyes twinkled when he suggested that they ditch their senior year homecoming halfway through the third Ariana Grande song of the night. 

And right now, the way he wandered around the confined space, running his hands along the wooden walls, covered with drawings and mementos from their childhood. 

“Do you remember the last time we came up here? It feels like forever ago.” Ricky said, using his fingers to trace the carving of two words that Gina remembers him placing there when they were seven. 

_House Porwen._

(“Because it’s our treehouse and it should be named after us! I think Porwen sounds cool! Like, straight out of Harry Potter, or something!” said seven-year-old Ricky, smiling that positively toothless grin that never failed to make seven-year old Gina’s heart flutter.)

“I do, actually. The day you let me fall on my _ass._ ” she smirked up at him, that smirk growing into a smile once he came to sit down next to her. His sudden proximity didn’t affect her at all. Nope. Not at all. 

“Hey! It’s not like I did it on purpose! I was 14, cut me some slack!”

He nudged her shoulder with his, returning her grin with that stupid, adorable, crooked smile. 

_God, it should be illegal to smile like that._

Gina laughed, nuzzling her head into his shoulder. She began to think back to their last visit to the small treehouse in his backyard. 

It was the last day of summer before their freshman year of high school, and she swore she’d never seen Ricky look more nervous than he did that day. He’d never been good at accepting change, especially not after his mother left to live in Chicago and start a new family with her new boyfriend when they were 10. 

Going to high school? Leaving all of the friends he’d known since elementary behind as they chose different schools throughout the city? It freaked him out, to say the least. 

“Ricky, stop pacing and just sit down! I’m getting dizzy watching you go back and forth and back and forth.” Gina rolled her eyes, completely baffled by his nervous behavior. 

A new school didn’t seem like a huge deal to her. She and her mom had moved around a lot before they settled in Salt Lake when Gina was 6. She’d done the whole _new school_ bit more times than she could count before she even hit double digits; it didn’t faze her anymore. 

She’d learned to embrace change. Change was how she ended up here, how she ended up with friends who loved her, how she ended up with… _him._

If change could bring her Ricky Bowen, how bad could it really be? 

“I’m sorry, I can’t! If I sit down, I’m pretty sure I’ll explode. Like, literally explode. I don’t understand how you can be so calm about this! It’s all happening so fast, Gi! One second, we’re going to the fifth grade, and the next, we’re going to high school! What if everything changes? What if you get all popular and I’m a loser and you don’t want to hang out with me anymore? What if-”

Gina stood up, grabbing both his shoulders in an attempt to calm him down. He visibly relaxed under her touch, his panicked expression softening. 

“Dude, you’re a loser _now_ , and I _still_ hang out with you, for some reason. I’m not going anywhere just because I’m going to be walking the same halls as _The_ Sharpay Evans.” He giggled breathily, sighing as he looked down at his feet. 

“I’m just… scared. Things are so good right now, I don’t want them to change. Bad things always seem to happen when things change and I just… I don’t know what to do, Gi.” 

There were a few beats of silence as she observed the young boy, wondering what she could do or say to offer him some form of relief. She hated how much this bothered him and she hated that she didn’t know how to fix it. 

She rubbed her hands up and down his arms comfortingly before wrapping her arms around his neck, pulling him into a tight hug. She felt his body begin to shake slightly in her arms, followed by soft sobs, as his arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her impossibly closer. 

“I swear, you better not be crying, Bowen. Because if you cry, I’m gonna cry, and you know I’m an ugly crier.” 

She smiled slightly when she heard him breathe out a small laugh, burying his head further into the crook of her neck. 

“I’m sorry, it’s so stupid… getting upset over something so simple.”

“It’s not stupid. Being scared is normal, you just have to focus on the good things,” she pulls back slightly, which ushers him to lift his head to face her. She brings her hands to his cheeks, wiping his tears away gently. “Like how I’m going to be here for you through it all. You’re stuck with me, Ricky Bowen.”

She smiled up at him, feeling a sense of warmth when he flashed his soft, crooked smile. Her cheeks flushed red as she realized how close they were, prompting her to tear her eyes away from his lingering gaze. 

And that’s when she felt it. The tingling sensation of his lips on her cheek. He _kissed_ her. Ricky Bowen, her best friend since she was 7, just kissed her. On the cheek, sure, but no boy had ever kissed her before.

She wasn’t sure how to react. Was the chilling feeling that traveled down her spine normal? Was the eruption of butterflies in her stomach a natural reaction to such an intimate action? Did he feel the same sensations?

She pulled away from him, choosing to ignore the fuzziness that clouded her thoughts and choosing to ignore the way his gaze burned into her _even more._

“What do you say we go inside and bake some cookies? There’s this new recipe I found online that I’ve been dying to try out!” she said, turning away from him in an attempt to hide her blush. Her cheek burned in the spot where he kissed her; she fought the urge to bring her hand up to touch the spot. 

“Uh, yeah! Yeah, for sure.”

He headed towards the rope ladder, climbing down first as he always did so that he could help her step off if she needed it. (She rarely ever needed it, but it was the thought that counts.)

Gina doesn’t look at him as he makes his way down, still fighting the lightheadedness that resulted from his actions. Then, she hears a _snap_ . And a _thud._ And _whatever other sounds a rope ladder makes when it disconnects from House Porwen and hits the ground, taking Ricky with it._

“Ricky! Oh my gosh, what did you do? Are you okay?!”

“Nothing! I didn’t do anything! The ladder just, I don’t know, gave out?”

Gina sighed exasperatedly, looking down at him through the hatch in the ground. 

“Well, how am _I_ supposed to get down?”

Ricky shrugged. “Jump?”

“It’s official. You’ve lost your mind. There’s no way I’m making this jump, Bowen.” 

“Come on! I’ll catch you!”

Ricky looked up at her pleadingly, reaching his arms up in her direction. This was it. _This was the end._ Death by jumping out of a treehouse and into the arms of her best friend who had just given her her first kiss. 

She braced herself as she sat down on the ground, her feet dangling out of the hole. 

“Promise me you won’t drop me?”

“I promise.”

He lied. As he caught her, the ground caught him. She landed directly on top of him, stifling a laugh as she saw the pained, but amused, expression on his face. 

“Well technically, I didn’t drop you!”

“No, but you definitely dropped _yourself._ ”

Then the two erupted into a fit of giggles, forgetting about the moment they’d shared minutes before. 

Gina was snapped out of her memory when Ricky kissed the top of her head before laying his head down on hers.

“Ricky,” he hummed in response, “why are we here tonight?” 

She felt his head leave hers, as she looked up to meet his eyes. There was something behind them that she couldn’t quite place, as his intense gaze burned into her eyes. 

“What happens next?” he whispers, almost so low that Gina can’t hear it. She feels his breath fan across her cheeks, and tries not to focus on their closeness as she responds.

“Well… I’m hoping I can go home and change out of this dress, it may look ‘ _wow’_ but it does not feel _‘wow’,_ ya know?”

She expects him to laugh at her statement, but bites her lip when she is met with silence instead. She sees his eyes flicker down to her lips and then back up again, and she swears she’s no longer breathing. 

“No, I mean after _all_ of this. We’re seniors, Gi. What happens in 6 months, when we leave? What happens to… us?”

_Definitely_ not breathing. 

She clears her throat in an attempt to regain her composure, before trying to answer his question.

“Um, I don’t know? I’ve never really been one to think about the future, I guess. I’m more of a ‘ _right here, right now’_ type of girl… I’d rather live in the moment.”

Her last sentence was quiet, almost a whisper as she tore her gaze from his. 

“I get that. So tell me, what’s going through that pretty little head of yours at _this_ moment?”

Gina laughs softly, finding a sliver of courage that prompts her to lift her eyes to find his again. 

“Probably the fact that you just called me _‘pretty’_ for the 15th time tonight. You’ve got to invest in a thesaurus, dude.”

He laughs again, and the feeling of warmth that seems to blaze within her whenever he’s around only grows. 

“I know plenty of synonyms for pretty,” he boasts, leaning in impossibly closer, so close that their noses are nearly touching. “Gina Porter, you are _stunning, gorgeous, lovely, beautiful… ‘wow’.”_

She felt her cheeks begin to burn, a fuzzy feeling clouding her mind and making her unable to do the smart thing and tear her eyes away from his before she makes the mistake of kissing him square on the lips right there in the middle of their rickety treehouse.

His previous statement rang in her ears. _What about us?_

“I didn’t answer your question.” she said, her voice barely able to raise above a breathless whisper. “You know I’ll always be here, right?”

“Yeah, I know. You said that last time, too. Something about me being stuck with you?”

“Huh, I guess I did. Talk about Deja Vu.”

She finally finds the strength to move away from him, standing as she walks towards the hatch. 

“Yeah, I guess. And to think, the situation was about to get even more familiar.”

Gina turned back to him, confused by his statement.

“What do you mean?” she watched as he stood, slowly approaching her before bending down to open the hatch. 

“I mean, that if we sat like that any longer, I probably would’ve ended up kissing you… again. Like I wanted to.” 

Gina froze, hoping that her shock wasn’t evident. He grabbed onto the rope ladder, beginning to make his descent. He smiled up at her, and she swears she could fall out right there on the spot. 

“Oh?”

“Yea-”

Then, there it is again. A _snap_ . And a _thud._ And _whatever other sounds a rope ladder makes when it disconnects from House Porwen and hits the ground, taking Ricky with it._

_No way. This much Deja Vu shouldn’t be allowed in one night._

Ricky stood up from the ground, laughing slightly as he dusted off his tux. He smiled up at her, reaching his arms at her once again. She could see his eyes twinkling from there, and fought the urge to look up at the sky just to make sure he hadn’t taken the stars. 

So again, she makes the jump. 

_“Promise me you won’t drop me?”_

_“I promise.”_

This time, he kept that promise. 

She took a deep breath before she fell, yelping as his arms wrapped around her waist. She hugged him tightly around his neck when he caught her, her feet slightly hovering over his as he held her. 

“Gotcha.” he whispered. She shivered at the feeling of his warm breath on her ear. 

“Nice catch.”

“Thanks for falling.”

He’s still holding her as he places her on the ground, a soft smile gracing his features. She returns his smile, lightly playing with the hair at the nape of his neck. 

She doesn’t know why she does it, maybe it’s the universe telling her to, but she rocks forward onto her toes, lightly pressing her lips to his cheek.

“I wanted to, too,” she whispers before pulling away, heading towards his house. 

They spent the rest of the night watching the High School Musical movies, the _Right Here, Right Now_ scene especially sticking out to them. 

(“Is this where you got that reference from, Gi?” “...Maybe.” “And to think, you just had to say it in a treehouse. Classic Theatre Geek.” “I hate you.” “No, you don’t.” “You’re right… I don’t.”)

She changes into one of his hoodies and a pair of his sweatpants (because she wasn’t kidding, that dress was _not_ comfortable, but she didn’t want to leave him just yet), and spends the night cuddled into his side, giving and receiving an endless amount of cheek kisses. Apparently that’s their thing. 

Maybe one of these times, she’ll _miss_ and the kiss will land on his lips instead. But who cares about the future?

She’s all about living in the moment. 

_Right Here, Right Now._


End file.
